The present application describes systems and techniques relating to data entry in electronic forms.
Conventional electronic forms include multiple fields, which can be used to enter multiple types of data for later use. Such forms are widely used in computer networks as a mechanism to collect information for use in business, industry, and many other areas of endeavor. These forms can be provided in different formats, such as in Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) or PORTABLE DOCUMENT FORMAT (PDF) developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated of San Jose, Calif. In general, a form field is identified by a name, which denotes the form field object in an instance of the form.
Some forms can receive values without requiring a user to type the values. A form can include specified default values for form fields. A form can have functionality built into the form that allows a form field to take a value calculated from values entered elsewhere. A traditional form filling interface can keep track of values entered in particular fields in a specific form from a particular source, and then propose those values in the future when that same particular field in the specific form from the particular source is seen again. Such proposed values are typically presented in a pull-down list and ordered in the list alphabetically. As a user types characters into the particular field, the alphabetical list is reduced based on the characters typed.
Moreover, data can be imported into a form. For example, Forms Data Format (FDF) is a data representation format developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated to allow importing of data into an existing PDF document. FDF files may be used to submit data to a server, or to receive data from a server. FDF Toolkit is an application program interface (API) developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated to facilitate the writing of server applications to generate and/or parse FDF data from a form created by the Adobe ACROBAT® Forms plug-in.
Despite these features of traditional forms, users still often need to enter the same values in equivalent fields in different forms. For example, a user often needs to type in name and address information in each different form they fill out, such as when registering with a Web site. One attempt to address this problem has been to define a standard for commonly used field names, and then allow the user to retain the commonly used values in a file for importing into a form when those standardized field names are recognized. For example, the Personal Form Names (PFN) standard specifies personal information such as name, address, social security number (SSN), telephone number, etc. The user enters this personal information once and then uploads it to any PFN-conforming form.